Counting Up to One (Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair) (Jewish Understanding)

okay good evening everybody welcome to this year which tonight is entitled counting up to one counter-intuitive we're in the period of time of the Omer which connects pesach and largely the Omer is counted in the month of ER for about over a hundred years now scientists have understood that thought human cognition Works essentially like a very super sophisticated computer neurons connect to other neurons in fantastically complicated and sophisticated ways but at the end of the day the whole process of thought if you like the the physical mechanism of thought is connection connection is the essence of thought in so to speak the body of thought how it works physically in your head and I was thinking also that if you think about it sorry for the pun the connection really is the soul of thought if we talk about the body we can talk about the soul a person understands things by comparing by extrapolating by saying this is like this in this way it's what's called Bina in Hebrew Bina comes from the word Bane Bane means between between this and that the distinction between things is what allows us to think and in a realm where there is no distinction thought as we understand it does not is not possible for us it says that the is something which is really Beyond our ability even though it's called wisdom and that's why the Torah starts with bet the second letter in the alphabet the bets could also stand for Bane because all human wisdom is based on the ability to discern this from this etc etc so the physical methodology of thoughts is the connection of synapses like a super sophisticated connect computer we're trying to suggest that the soul of thought is the ability to connect and if I were to ask you for the most Elemental word in language which signifies connection I think that would be and and is really the elemental building block of cognition this and that in Hebrew the word well it's not really a word it's a letter the letter for and is above now if I were to ask you to give a pictogram of the concept of and if I would ask you to make a picture of and take the word and and draw me a picture I think you'd probably draw a straight line and or and so vov in Los Angeles in Hebrew also has a very interesting aspect that there are two kinds of valves there are two kind of ands in in certainly In classical and Biblical Hebrew one is What's called the vavage the verb which connects which is what we call and in English but there's another valve which is called the vava the vava hippo literally means the overturning or the reversing valve for example I give you a classic example and it says many places in the toraham in modern Hebrew would be translated as and he will speak but of course we learn the commission many times we know it means and God spoke why because when you take the future tense and you put a bob in front of it he will speak because and becomes and he spoke and the reverse is also true the past becomes the future with the valve and we'll try and talk about this a little bit later on but the concept is is that there's this connection not just a one word with another but the future and the past by the the letter of the vov is a connector interestingly enough the word valve in Hebrew translators translates as a hook vavimo hooks story and when the Torah talks about the setting up of the mishkan it describes vavim so above is a hook a hook can connects that's the whole job of a hook the valve is the pictogram of and which is the basic letter of connection and the line of the Omer is the line which connects these those two extremities of pesach and schwus if you think about it spherisa Omer is a strange it's a bit of a misnomer what does it mean we're counting the Omer the Omer was a koraban an offering of Bali so what does it mean we're counting a one-time Corbin maybe svirat Yamaha Omer the days of the omen but even so what's what does this mean that we are svirata now as we said before there's this idea of connection which is I'm sorry I forgot to say something else which is important the um the the zoa College says that all of the months were created with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet the letter which was which created the um the letter in the human alphabet which was responsible through which Hashem created the month of era is the letter of so era is valve valve is connection and we've really got these two two events The Exodus from Europe from Egypt is described as a birth as it says that's the time the nikal Israel came out from Israel it was like a birth and we achieve some kind of Godless maturity when we get to Sinai now the word Katan which means a minor in Hebrew please stop me if something's not clear and the word in Hebrew for an adult godol are very interesting words the word Katan is connected to an Aramaic word katua in fact we have the same word in English Cut why is a Katan why is a minor why is a child referred to as a Katan a child finds it very difficult to be able to sequence link together the separate disparate events of his life you take a a child a baby is prepared prepared to wake up an entire continent if he has a tickle in the back of his throat a child sees now this now this you give a child a popsicle he's the happiest person in the world take it away the world has just come to an end a Katan the perception of a Katan is things are cut katua now this now this now this I once thought that actually the media certainly the television are dedicated to keeping us being katanim because the whole process of watching too much television means that our attention span becomes severely crippled now this now this now this same thing and the word gadol in Hebrew Gadot is connected to the when yaakovina spoke about the tribe of God God godenu God is a marching troop a platoon the modern word in modern in modern Hebrew gadud means a platoon the whole idea of a platoon a troop is that it goes forward so the whole idea of godlut is connection in other words what really distinguishes a child from an adult is an adult is able to take every single moment and plug it into the moment before and the moment after that is what it means to be a godo those separate moments that a child finds very difficult assembling and of course the greater a person is the more they everything in their life becomes focused and and ordered and targeted one of the things one of the common things of the the Merit the marriage that I've had to meet the Anish the Great Men the great Jewish sages that I've had the privilege to meet I think the one thing that I could say which unified all of them they're all very different in many ways but the one thing they had in common is this idea of God loot that they there was nothing in their lives which went out to the side everything was focused in most of us have a lot of difficulty I think taking all the the gifts of time in our life that Hashem gives us and plugging it in in a focused way to keep on target it's a great effort for us because in some way we're still children we're still easily distracted and Adam gadol is able to focus and plug everything in his life into the same place so again mits rhyme is where we were katanim that's our birth and we achieved this God loot this adult adulthood if you like when we get to to Sinai it says in to heal him limnosis teach us to number our days that we may obtain a wise heart I want to speak about this idea of numbering and that's what is this what I really want to say is as follows it's very strange if you look at the the Omer what is how do we count the first day of the Oma we say Yom why do we say Oma there are two kinds of counting and this is really the core of what we want to get to right now there's accounting where the process is immaterial largely immaterial and the whole idea is to come to Assam to come to a total to get to a certain place and there's another kind of counting where the counting itself is the destination foreign in other words if you remember on Yom Kippur when we described the vote of the coming God and with the sprinkling of the brunt we says it's the same kind of idea when we're talking about this the Omer the reason why the alma doesn't start with Michonne is because and then the Shaney is the Shaney to the and the shlishi is the meaning every day we are expanding that idea of what ehrad is we're not counting in the sense of trying to achieve a total the counting itself now it's interesting because the word in other words is not to reveal a number because the number which we actually are going to get to is a number which is beyond Counting why because we don't count it Traverse is the 50th day of the Oma and we don't stand up and say hey we don't we don't count it why don't we count it you can't count it 50 although of course there's a number 50 what 50 represents is uncountable the mar Ali many places says that this world can be mugda can be defined by the number seven there are seven colors in the rainbow there are seven causes in the in seven notes in the diatonic scale in most calendars there are seven days in the week seven now if you want to extrapolate something to its absolute limit you would times it by itself so if you take seven by seven you get 49. that's the last number we count why because what is beyond 49 is really Beyond counting it's something which is not is not in this world so clearly the sphere ome is not to get to 50 because we can't get to 50. so every day we're counting we're counting back this is the shiny to the Yom ercot so to speak becomes more and more clear what that erode is we're revealing that echot the word svira apart from meaning obviously to count is also means to clarify the guarantee when talking about the get a divorce contract says that a get is called a safer why is it called a safer not just a book of krito means cutting off correct a book of cutting off a book of cutting off the relationship between the husband and the wife but it's a safer creature why because the gemara says it's come to mix excuse me to make things absolutely clear it's Vera means to make things clear absolutely clear the Torah says in shmos if you remember when the zakainim went up to the mountain and they saw the god of Israel and under his feet was the likeness of a of a pavement of sapir and the Very likeness of the sky for Purity the Euro s kale a location as well the god of Israel with takasra glove Kamas sapphire in English the word safia Sapphire comes from the same motive as sapir which is the same as fira clarification a Sci-Fi is a very clear Stone the this is what the spirit the spirit is supposed to bring it is supposed to being bring a clarity foreign the gemara says foreign Omar is Yash svirata Omer is the clarification of yesh those 310 worlds which exist which wait for every tadiq in the world to come the essential reward of alamabad is to see the face of Hashem wanted to see the face of Hashem and he said you cannot see my face in this world in this world you cannot see hashem's face as it says in the ashaya this reward iron no eye has seen what this existence is what that Yash is yish means reality existence existence as it is that is what is bequeathed to the tadiq in the world to come is the clarification of the age that Journey where we're counting up counting up to one is every day we are Ming clarifying that Echo that we started off with and of course that is 50 that is 50 which is Gematria called everything and we'll come back to that concept later on now it says in this world you cannot see hashem's faith but you can see what brings you so to speak to hashem's face if you remember the gemara the Torah says that Moshi Robina wanted to see hashem's face and he wouldn't he couldn't show it to him so what did he show him his back and Rashi says he showed him the not honest villain that philan have four straps coming out from them that signifies the four corners of the world that you will break out in the four directions if you think of the tephilian it's a beautiful idea because the Dollar on the not of those four straps the four directional straps that come into the filling where do they lead to remember there's a name of Hashem which is hinted to and more than hinted to is represented in the Teflon there's the dalid what's the name we're talking about now the dalid is what you can see in this world on the face the other side is the shin and the youth yes the dalud this world you can't see in this world Hashem you can't see the yes you can't see the 310 worlds Ayan La Rosa look him no I have seen that except you but you can see what leads there which is called spherata Oma the cloud please I thought Judaism believed in four worlds Mary this is in the next World this is this is this is the three what does that actually mean there are 310 uh existences it says it's a posse again in Michelin I will I'm going to bequeath the one those who beloved me yesh so the gemara says that will in the future Hashem will give to each Sadiq 310 worlds he says in the future last seat in the future Miss tell me yes and then it brings this 310.310 what we're trying to say now is a clarification of the Asia as much clarity as you can get to in this world and that's why we start off with the echoth and we don't say young rishan because the Shani is the Shaney to the echard and the schlichi to the echo just as we says in the sprinkling of the blood on Yom Kippur as I said the promise to yaakovino for us the yoma's phone of enigma that was the breaking up Paratha the four directions which lead to yaish you can't see the face you can't see the Yash but you can see how you get to it foreign a person instinctively feels he comes from something Eternal and he instinctly instinctively feels he's going to something eternal that's something we're going to discuss a little bit more detail next week that's the essence really of Schwarz but in order to understand that we have to break out from the four corners of this world so to speak as we speak speak of it conceptually the the spirit of us we said it's coming to make things completely clear there's an interesting maybe we'll just go into this briefly that Haman in uh the gemara says the Magilla that Harman Harmon goes to find Mordecai to dress him in the Royal clothes when tells him he has to dress him up in the Royal clothes and ride him on the Royal Horse and he goes to find him at the gates of the king he doesn't find him there he goes to the base medrish he finds him there and Mordechai is sitting there learning with the children the hilgras the laws of the bringing of the Omer for that was the day that was the day in which the armor was built and the brought in the time of the base of migdush obviously at the base I mean they didn't have a base to make dish at that point it was between the two but imigdos but on that day that's what the gemara says Hammond hears they're discussing this offering called oh man he asked the children what is the armor made from or must be gold at the very least such an important thing they say no it's barley and what food and how much of that how do they have to do you have to give a comet a comet says the amount that can fit between these two fingers right let's say they would do kamitza they would put the Bali in here and then they would do these the two outer fingers to trim it off and that was the amount that was the Corbin and he said to them in the future law seed that comets of yours will come and Deutsche the ten thousand Kika 10 000 talents I think they call it of silver which I gave to destroy the Jewish people that little little piece of barley he understood that Omer was yish that's what hazal Ravine were revealing to us the spirit the clarification of the Oma means that that Haman understood that his that little that our concept of our connection with the age our connection with Omar would push aside all of the money in the world let's go back to this idea of counting mitz Ryan we left mids rhyme there's another word which is connected with counting called mispah mispa mispah means number mitzrayim was a place which rhyme can be understood as Meza yam meitza means a boundary yum means the sea the C conceptually is something which is that which is Without End because I'll teach us that it wouldn't were not for the land that the sea would envelop the world many many times as a famous Camara that says that the blue of the titsis the color blue treileles is similar to this to the Sea one second so the C as I said is something which is a concept of that which is Without End as I said even though it does have an end but its end is really by virtue of the fact that the land holds it back but but Musa in its Essence it is something which is Without End and as you said as mayor said the blue of the sea is done when the blue is the trellis of the rakia rakia is the sky is the color of blue why do blue is basically distance unobstructed distance it's the color of Heaven that color is the blue of the rakia which is basically Without End and the Ghazal teaches that the blue of the Ricky is DOMA the kisser covered whatever that that concept is it's not for us we can say the words means the throne throne of Glory conceptually Hashem sits on a a throne but each of these steps is something which takes us Beyond something which is which is infinity a little that the blur that sits this represents represents represents the Infinity of the Sea The Infinity of the sea represents the Infinity of the sky the Infinity of the sky up represents the real Infinity which is ainsof which is wanted to reduce that yam as we said yum is something which is gamatria 50. 50 is the number we don't count at the end of this at the end of the that's where we get to that's the number so to speak the mits rhyme didn't want us to get to that was what we were made say yam that's what we were held in in mitzrayim within that world view that you can't escape that's the slavery of mitzrayim to take us away and when we broke out from that and we finally get to the word mispah which means number has the same Gamache as mitzrayim so you have these two systems of countings we said at the beginning there's a counting which takes you to a certain total that's mispah but there's a sphera which takes you which you basically expands the concept of echo to the point that it leaves number as we understand it we left mitzrayim we left that constriction of Mitzi yam and we're traveling towards that which is past number that is sphera that is connecting back to echot okay so we mentioned you know shavors coming up in a week or so is something very um unusual about suppose the four cup cups matzah not wheat comets many many Mitzvahs whole section of sugar s for species sitting in the sukkah and what does Schwarz have and don't tell me Cheesecake for that but there's no identifying why what's that dancing that's on the mitzvah there is no Mitzvah that sets there's no Mesa Mitzvah of it what's that but these are that's first of all that's uh that's the robot there's no on on pesach we have mitsus the eraser I mean true we can't do all of them because they don't have the Mason but sure uh as a teaching your children right you're saying telling your son on peso because it is and we have we have uh eating matzah mitsudi Arisa so because we have the four four minutes certainly on the first day and we also have the Suka seven days of mitzvadirisa on schwares what do we have now it's interesting because the Zara kodesh says that schwus is the center of the festivals the closer you get to the center of something the more invisible it becomes the true Center of something really has no time or space the further away you get from the center there's more an expansion into time and space that's why pesach has seven days suckers eight days seven eight days with shrinia Terrace chavois is only one day it has no Mitzvah because it's so to speak the center of of all existence the gemara says if you look at the beginning of the Torah it says all of the days of the week of the days of creation that is uh said in the following way except for the first day which again is a bit like when we said we could talk about that as well like with the um creation but the second day of creation is said Yom Cheney doesn't say Yom hashani doesn't say but it does say Yom hashishi in English you don't see this because translators to make it more um what's it called not grammatical um idiomatic they add the English the second day the third day the fourth day but in Hebrew just says second day Third Day fourth day fifth day the sixth day why because Rashi says that it's actually hitting hinting to another another sixth yomashi she is hinting to a day which was the sixth of Sivan which is the giving of the Torah the whole world was like so how do you say held in abeyance everything was waiting on that sixth day even though that was the finished the physical creation was so to speak finished at that point but the whole world was hanging in a state of Doubt until Claudius rail said nasiva nishma at that point the whole of creation becomes whole I once thought of a marshall to maybe understand to try and explain what I'm saying you know when you have a jigsaw puzzle and one piece is missing so you're very aware of the fact that it's a jigsaw puzzle you see all the lines as soon as that last piece goes into the jigsaw puzzle all the lines so to speak vanish I mean they don't literally vanish but suddenly you see the picture and you're not aware at all is the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle it is the landscape so to speak where everything becomes complete and when you when when you have all 50 coal you can see nothing at all because that is the day of that is the day where Bina so to speak differentiation stops that is why shavuas has no specific Mitzvah because it's the day of all and when you have all you can see nothing at all it says in the kadusha cavodo Malayalam his honor his glory fills the world his ministering and Angels ask one another Macomb cabodo where is the place of his cupboard hello what kind of question is that you just told me that this kavodo fills the whole world that's exactly what I'm saying when something fills everything it becomes invisible we can only discern things by their difference by it's not this it's not that as soon as that last jigsaw drops into place that is first that's the the empty landscape it has no matter it has no little of an airstroke it's the empty landscape which contains all creation and that's why it's only one day because really notionally is the middle point of that turning Circle so to speak as we talk about a bit about the dreidelness similar idea where everything vanishes it contains everything when something contains everything you can't see everything it's only when it starts to separate you get your seven days of pesach eight days of circus in the middle the middle of everything she was notionally should be a single Split Second of time okay it can't be that way why because it's a hug it's a Moet and therefore it has the din of the modim you have to have 24 hours but that's only because it's a Marriott but what choice represents is really something which is Beyond Time yeah and so maybe there's no avoidance also it would be another angle on shavuas because we've reached such a high spiritual level that I mean obviously we're also receiving all of it so we're going to be keeping immenses um I was curious if Lewis has ever compared to oil in such a way because of the high level we've reached I mean put it I I haven't heard so I haven't heard that but the fact that I haven't heard it doesn't mean it's not true something that maybe you want to investigate I I don't know I don't know the answer to that question the culmination that's for sure that's what we're saying let me just um bring out one more point in this idea of first she was has no calendar date it's a whole temporal identity is masked it's the 50th day after pesach which means that in the days when there was a Sanhedrin and a base amigdash and there was nowadays we have a fixed calendar but back in the day when they Sanctified the Moon by ear by sight s could fall on one of three days that's the only Festival the only Moet pesach as always 15th of Nissan circus is always fifteen thousand fifteenth of tishma Rosh Hashanah is always Rosh Hashanah Yom Kipper is always attended shavors has no date in the calendar it's this again this kind of it's concealed maybe for the same reason because it really doesn't have a temporal identity it's something which is beyond time because if you think about it in a time when the new moon was Sanctified by sighting so both Nissan and er could be either 28 or 29 days long so they both could be 28 they both could be 29 or they could one could be 28 one could be 29 so you have three possible days on which of us could fall I'm going to try and sum up what we said there is a right that that would like you said like the sixth day of connotes the six or seven right which was the day when but every in in the year in every year it could be the sixth seventh or eighth um so what's the purpose Assurance to be tempted to have this kind of philosophical experience where there's the kind of nullification of the temporality of whatever you kind of can see you know about this so I mean we have this holiday so what's the problem with the kind of experience what should we try and describe it with experience yeah you know kind of inception because obviously you're trying to impart to us so how should we approach this holiday okay so um I'm going to cop out on this one you have to come next week because next week we're really going to talk about really what what show is this really I wanted to talk today about spiritual man and the idea is first oh man as we said is to another way to understand it is the passageway from the birth to the Godless where every day we are growing so to speak we are growing in our ability to plug into right at the beginning no I don't think so I think that it's uh that's our conversation itself but I don't think a person should be exhausted I think you can you can you can lose out on a lot if you if you can stay up all night and lie and learn and Daven that's wonderful but uh if you have to know your your limits and your your abilities and where your strengths and where your weaknesses are um let me see if I can sum this up that we said a lot of things but going back to it we we discussed the idea that sphera means Clarity Omer means yesh we talked about the idea of the fill in that you can't see Asian this world but you can see what leads to the age that is the the dollar that's yakovino that's the inheritance of yakovina that we have disability to connect to that which is beyond and that is that a college book who landed Hashem will bequeath this is these 310 words worlds 310 is Ish and that's what really frightened Harmon so much that he understood that we give such a little thing called Omer but what Hashem gives us in return for that is true existence that is the development of what we're trying to do in these days the counting is not accounting that as we as we said is going anywhere because it basically goes to a place beyond Counting 50 is something which we can't count in this world it doesn't exist in this world memtes sharik Bina which only Moshe rabena was able to reach but the process is the process of clarification that each day clarifies for ourselves a little bit more brings us closer to this moment of what's happening on shoes and I hope you'll join me next week where we'll talk about really what your voice is all about now maybe I'll just give a little bit of a hint of what we're going to talk about Schwarz is also a very strange day because have you ever thought about it we want to be coach first Young Martin why is that called Yom kabalist or saying from our point of view it's the day we received the Torah and the answer is we really didn't get the Torah on choice at least we got it but we don't have that Terror today the Torah that we have today we received on Yom Kippur that's the turret we have now so why don't we either why don't we should celebrate Yom kippurs at the same time as Yom Kippur that's when we got the total that's Yom kabalas torresino so if we really didn't get the Torah and incense if you look at it that was a kind of a rather sad day right because most of Robina came down and smashed the Lucas when he saw Cloud Israel worshiping about the Zora being led astray and so really the whole of Schwarz really if you think about it from that point of view from the point of view of cabalissator was an unmitigated disaster so why is it that we still celebrate shavors which we clearly do so this will try and answer that question exactly what happened on First and it's something I think really if you can make it next week it's really a fundamental uh understanding in Yiddish games